What causes an item pickup granting its reward twice?

The pickup grants its reward in an overlap callback that can fire from more than one collider or on consecutive frames before the item is destroyed.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Picking Up an Item Twice When Two Colliders Overlap It

Quick answer: Set a consumed flag the instant the first valid overlap fires and bail out of any later callback, then destroy or disable the item.

A coin that grants twice is being collected by two overlap events before it despawns. Mark it consumed on the first hit and ignore the rest. Here is the fix.

How to fix it

1. Guard with a consumed flag

On the first valid overlap, set a boolean flag and immediately return from any subsequent callback, so a second collider or frame cannot grant the reward again.

2. Disable the collider right away

As soon as pickup begins, disable the item's collider or trigger so no further overlap events can fire before the object is destroyed.

3. Destroy after granting

Grant the reward, then destroy or pool the item in the same step. Avoid leaving a granted-but-alive item that a late overlap could process again.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every GameMaker error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The errors you never hear about are the ones quietly costing you players. Visibility turns them into a worklist.